Strasbourg, 23 February 2012 CMJ(2012)9 JOINT COUNCIL ON YOUTH (CMJ) 26 th meeting Budapest, 28-30 March 2012 European Youth Centre YOUTH POLICY IN BELGIUM A review by the international team of the Council of Europe COUNCIL OF EUROPE INTERNATIONAL YOUTH POLICY REVIEW ‘C’est plus compliqué que ça’ A review of youth policy in Belgium by the international team of the Council of Europe Gazela Pudar Leena Suurpää Howard Williamson Manfred Zentner Members of the international review team: Georges Metz [CDEJ] (Chair) Bjorn Jaaberg Hansen [CDEJ] Jorge Orlando Queirós [CDEJ], Kyrylo Ivliev [Advisory Council] Camelia Nistor [Advisory Council] André-Jacques Dodin [Secretariat] Gazela Pudar [Researcher] Leena Suurpää [Researcher] Manfred Zentner [Researcher] Howard Williamson [Co-ordinator] February 2012 2 Contents page Acknowledgements 4 Chapter 1: Introduction 5 Chapter 2: Youth Policy in the Flemish Community 16 Chapter 3: Youth Policy in the French-speaking Community 41 Chapter 4: Youth Policy in the German-speaking Community 65 Chapter 5: A case study – dealing with youth unemployment 91 Chapter 6: Conclusions and Recommendations 100 Bibliography 108 Appendices: The programme for the international review team 111 3 Acknowledgements The Secretariat of the Youth Directorate (now the Directorate for Democratic Citizenship and Participation) and the members of the international review team would like to thank the many people in Belgium who extended a strong welcome and personal hospitality over and above the professional co-operation and collaboration with the review process. In particular, we would like to thank the senior officials from the three Communities – Jan Vanhee (Flemish Community), Francoise Crémer (French Community) and Armand Meys (German-speaking Community) – for oiling the wheels in the planning and organisation of the team’s visits and the wider review process. Like many things in Belgium, this was not straightforward (just look at the schedules for the visits in the Appendix to the report!) but effective collaboration within Belgium and between those in Belgium and the co-ordinator of the review made it possible. In particular, Jan Vanhee anchored the lines of communication and, when necessary, went ‘the extra mile’ to ensure that arrangements kept to time and task. We all know that this is embedded in Jan’s character, but we thank him all the same. We would also like to thank the EU National Agencies for the Flemish Community (Koen Lambert) and the French-speaking Community (Laurence Hermand and Thierry Dufour) for hosting a number of meetings and for making their premises at JINT and BIJ available to the team for both relaxation and reflection. Beyond these named individuals, who have been valued colleagues on the European stage in relation to youth policy, as well as constructive protagonists for the youth policy review of Belgium, there are many more who took the time to meet us and furnished us with supplementary information. We applaud the commitment of all three Ministers to their young people; they are very much ‘hands-on’ and informed of the challenges to which there needs to be an evolving response. We welcomed the opportunity to meet with the three Youth Councils, both independently and under the auspices of the unofficial J-Club, which brings them together to construct, when possible, a shared position on federal, European and international matters. And, finally, we want to express our appreciation to all those policy makers, managers, administrators, practitioners and researchers, both in the youth field and beyond in arenas that affect young people, who contributed to the review and who contribute in their different ways to the lives of young people in Belgium. 4 Chapter 1 Introduction Some background to the Council of Europe international reviews of national youth policy ‘C’est plus compliqué que ça’. This was the recurrent response to attempts by the Council of Europe international review team to clarify and confirm their understanding of a range of core youth policy issues in Belgium. The team itself was a complex construction, in an attempt to respect and respond to the specific political, geographical, linguistic and cultural characteristics of Belgium. Routinely, an international review team comprises six or seven individuals: nominations by the statutory bodies of the youth directorate (now the Department for Democratic Citizenship and Participation) of the Council of Europe – from the governmental committee and from youth organisations, a member of the Secretariat, two or three youth researchers or youth experts, and, in the past few years, the co- ordinator of the review process, who himself is active in youth research. The nominee from the inter-governmental steering group on youth (the CDEJ) is the designated chair of each review. But Belgium was different from any arrangements that have gone before. The international team for the youth policy review of Belgium was composed of no less than eleven individuals – three from each of the statutory bodies (though one of the youth organisations’ nominees, regrettably, was not able to take part), three youth researchers, the representative of the secretariat, and the co-ordinator. The rationale behind this constellation was that the international team would be able to divide its focus, engagement and, critically, understanding, between the three language communities (which are also formal administrative Communities) of Belgium. In a sense, this meant conducting three rather separate ‘mini-reviews’, though the smaller teams were not so rigid that most members had no opportunity to witness youth policy activity in other parts of Belgium as well. Indeed, arrangements explicitly sought to provide as many team members as possible with some opportunity to gain at least a ‘feel’ for youth policy in contexts other than the one on which they were primarily focused. After all, a central tenet underlying the Council of Europe international reviews is that a team is interested in the lives of all young people within the boundaries of the country under review, not just those defined by administrative, cultural or political borders. Given many of the countries previously reviewed (for example, Estonia, Romania, Slovakia, Cyprus and Moldova), this has been an important principled stand. The international review of youth policy in Belgium But of course Belgium is, arguably, both different from as well as more complicated than that! Though its political and linguistic C/communities do anchor the core of ‘youth policy’ – at least in its sense of being cultural and educational practice – the international review team had also to take account of Regional activity and responsibilities that affect the lives of young people and, indeed, 5 policy and practice within the municipalities of Belgium. We attempt, with some anxiety and caution, to map this framework in our opening chapter that seeks to capture those ‘youth policy’ matters that remain at the federal level, while also delineating how other such responsibilities are divided between other administrative levels. These are addressed at different points in subsequent chapters. Whatever our efforts, we are humble enough to acknowledge that the situation is probably ‘plus compliqué que ça’! The international review of national youth policy in Belgium is the 18th such review to be conducted by the Council of Europe. Each has contributed to the overall objectives of the review process as well as providing lessons that have shaped the evolution of the review process itself. The objectives are threefold: • To provide a constructively critical perspective on the country under review • To learn from the country under review, through examples of good practice or specific youth policy challenges • To develop a European framework – not a blueprint – for thinking about youth policy A Council of Europe international youth policy review now takes some eighteen months, not counting the intention to have a follow-up two years later. The first review, of Finland in 1997, took six months. That review was a venture (or adventure) into the dark. There was no model to follow. Gradually a process model has been established, but it is not cast in stone and is, almost every time, subject to revision for a variety of professional and pragmatic reasons. Initially, the early reviews built up a body of knowledge and understanding of ‘youth policy’, though this was constructed on a somewhat ad hoc basis and disseminated solely through the written (national and international) reports and through a presentation to the Joint Council of the Youth Directorate of the Council of Europe (the joint meeting of the CDEJ and the Advisory Council, representing youth organisations). There was no preliminary, preparatory visit. There was no identification of priority issues. There was no National Hearing. There was no follow-up. After seven reviews, a clear framework for understanding and reviewing youth policy had emerged (see Williamson 2002): • Concepts of ‘youth’ and ‘youth policy’ • Legislation and finance • Structures for delivery • Policy domains • Cross-cutting issues • Research, training and dissemination This was, broadly, the framework that informed the deliberations of the next seven international reviews and they added further substance to it. For example, the influence of faith or military issues on ‘youth policy’ had merited little attention, and were perhaps not important, in the early reviews (of countries such as The Netherlands, Sweden or Spain), but they were more than significant in the reviews of countries such as Malta, Cyprus, Armenia and Moldova. However, it became increasingly apparent that, in trying to cover everything, there was a risk of the international reviews 6 interrogating nothing. The terrain for the reviews had become too broad, at the expense of depth. In order to address this, recent reviews have sought to focus on a small number of priority issues identified by the authorities in the host country and to highlight a small number of additional issues considered by the international team to merit in-depth commentary and reflection.